In the high-paced home based business industry, sometimes we get caught up in a crazy whirlwind of activity–especially on the internet. Your mompreneur business is no exception. But how much of that is actually necessary and how much of it isn’t? Shouldn’t we be putting our focus on those things that actually work? Better yet, shouldn’t our time be spent doing those things that will MAKE US MONEY? Well, of course!
So, the question is, what are you doing everyday in your business? Are you organized about how you spend your time? Do you know as you complete each task what effect it will have on your bottom line? Specifically? Or if it doesn’t have an effect, is it’s purpose defined well enough to justify your doing it at all?
If you answered no or I don’t know, then you need a business makeover, toute de suite (that’s French for “right away”).
We all love makeovers, don’t we? They are fun and the end result is usually always surprising in a good way. So, let’s make this fun, too.
First of all, if you don’t have a mission statement for your mompreneur business, then get one. This will be the core of all of your communications and will most likely be tied to your brand. I am not going to go into detail about how to do this, as I know that there have been full length books written on the subject. Good Day Mompreneur has one (located at the bottom of every page of our website), and so should you.
Secondly, take a look at your week. What do you have scheduled for yourself? Appointments? Conference calls? Meetings? Webinars? Hopefully by now you already have an idea of what your week looks like and you know when you are going to work on your business.
Notice that I did NOT say “work in your business.” I said “work on your business.” This means that right away you are going to have to identify ways to improve how you operate on a daily basis.
Let me give you an example. Say you have a blog that is getting an okay amount of traffic. The few affiliate products that you have sell occasionally, but there are plenty of other opportunities that you have not capitalized on, in the form of other products you could either create or promote for others.
Most of your time up to this point has been creating excellent content. Some of it is optimized for keywords that you have researched, and some of it is not. You also spend a lot of time visiting other people’s blogs posting comments in order to leave a link going back to the main page of your site.
All of a sudden, you notice that the YouTube video you put up last month got more traffic than your blog. Not only that, but every time you post something original on your Facebook Fanpage, you get an average of 10 comments. The problem is, whenever you go to your profile, you end up spending an hour at least looking at pictures of other people on your friends list.
Here is where the rubber meets the road. You want to make more money. So you need to make a list of everything you are doing that seems to be moving you in that direction. Then you want to number your list in order of money-making priority. Rewrite your list, starting with your number 1 on the top.
Now, if we were to apply the 80/20 rule, and you had 10 things on your list, you would want to draw a line separating your top two tasks from the rest. Those are the things you want to spend 80 percent of your time doing. The bottom eight items would get 20 percent. You get the idea.
The trick is knowing how to order your list. The first priority should be to make more money from your existing traffic. Researching other opportunities will most likely be the easiest way to accomplish this.
Looking at our example above, Facebook and YouTube activities seem to be getting the most attention. Those would go at the top of the list, too. You just need to figure out how to monetize in those places. Adding a well-placed link to either of those places would be a good move.
Everything else needs to take a back seat. In fact, you can even outsource some or all of them. That’s what I would do, anyway.
You will be surprised at how much more freedom you will have–and how much more money you will make.
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Thanks for the tips, Rana. The 80/20 rule is obvious when I think about it, but not obvious when I try to do it. I find that I get ideas of what I “should” be doing and I forget to do what works!
Julia
A lot of people spend hours doing nothing but piddling away their time. They don’t see it that way, because it feels like work. Oh I am reading forums because this is research. I am on Twitter for 3 hours because this is networking. I am checking my email every 5 minutes because this is important. The key is to cut down on the fluff and have set priorities in place and measurable goals in mind.
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